>
>Book Party for _MARX ON SUICIDE_
>
>Eric A. Plaut and Kevin Anderson, editors of a new book, _MARX ON
>SUICIDE_, will discuss the work and the contemporary issues to which it
>speaks at a book party on Sunday, February 20. The party, which will
>take place at the Parish House parlor of Washington Square Church, 133
>W. 4th St. in Manhattan, will begin at 6:30 p.m.
This looks a valuable initiative. On closer inspection I agree the case that this work is more than a historical curiosity.
It is actually in Volume 4 of the Collected Works sovering 1844-45 p597.
This notes that the work is published in English for the first time with this edition of 1975. Its textual footnote describes is as an almost incidental social commentary:
"This work was written by Marx to expose certain repulsive aspects of bourgeois society, it morals and its customs, using documentary evidence provided by one of its representatives..."
Marx's opening however is reminiscent of Western Marxists for the status it gives the critique of bourgeois civil society. It is also reminiscent of Lenin's arguments in What is to Be Done about the importance of not restricting political criticism to the immediate concerns of the working class alone.
"French criticism of society has, at least, in part the great merit of having shown up the contradictions and unnaturalness of modern life not only in the relationships of particular classes, but in all circles and forms of modern intercourse. And it has done that in accounts evincing the warmth of life itself, broadness of view, refined subtlety, and bold originality of spirit, which one will seek in vain in any other nation. Compare the critical writings of Owen and Fourier, for example, so far as they concern the relationships of life, to gain an idea of this superiority of the French. It is by no means only to the French 'socialist' writers proper that one must look for the critical presentation of social conditions; but to writers in every sphere of literature, and in particular of novels and memoirs."
So he goes on to quote and rewrite the evidence of "our achive-keeper of the Paris prefecture of the police."
He highlights the bourgeois nature of marital relations, emphasising "the jealous man is above all a private property-owner".
This is in the context of a case study involving the relative of a "young creole of attractive appearance" who came into Peuchet's office.
About peoples' gossip over suicides he comments "Opinion is too much divided by people's isolation too ignorant, too corrupt," adding "because each is a stranger to himself and all are strangers to one another."
Marx adds the words "social" and "commercial" in various places to accentuate the overall criticism of bourgeois society.
There is his own commentary on the psychological mechanism whereby those who are socially abused, abuse others:
"The most cowardly, unresisting people become implacable as soon as they can exercise their absolute parental authority. The abuse of this authority is, as it were, a crude compensation for all the submissiveness and dependence to which they abase themselves willy-nilly in bourgeois society."
Marx flagrantly alters Peuchet's comments about his motivation from that of a serious professional to a revolutionary in this passage:
"In the position I held in the police administration suicides were part of my responsibility; I wished to learn whether among the causes motivating them there were any whose effect could be obviated. I undertook extensive work of the subject." The next sentence was to read "Without engaging in any theoretical investigation, I shall try to adduce the facts." Marx substitutes: "I found any attempts short of a *total reform of the present order of society* would be in vain." !!!
I am not aware that progressive psychologists or psychiatrists, even those consciously marxist in leanings, particularly turn to this essay by Marx on suicide. I take the argument of the editors that Marx really made it his own essay. However no one can seriously argue that there would be no suicides under socialism. Indeed some research suggests that the rate may be higher in some social democratic countries than in some others where oppression and exploitation is more obvious.
However the work may be better seen as illustrative of Marx's critical attitude to the whole of bourgeois society.
I would be interested to read more details of what Plaut and Anderson emphasise.
Chris Burford
London